The economics of hiring ex-cons

Megan McArdle was kind enough to indulge me and do a post on ex-cons and the job market. I wanted to get the perspective of someone who wasn't like me (self-professed pinko, commie) and yet who I respected. Furthermore, I've really enjoyed the comments on Section 8, so I figured it'd be good to look at some other social issues. Anyway, I enjoyed her formulation of the problem. Also here are some of the solutions:

1) Reduce the number of crimes to things like assault, so that poor
kids have as few opportunities as possible to make those sorts of
permanent mistakes.

2) Less prison. Prison is awful for us as well as the prisoners. I'm
not saying we shouldn't punish kids who rob liquor stores, but we could
try to think of ways that don't involve shoving them into a metal box
with a lot of other criminals. Here's where Mark Kleiman's ideas have a
lot of merit--use intensive monitoring instead of warehousing. There's
a lot of garbage that needs picking up on the streets of American
cities; this is one example of something that would be a better use of
low-level criminal time then staring at bars.

3) Tax breaks for hiring ex-felons, say for the first two years of
employment. It will cost us more money up front, but less money if the
felons stay out of prison--prison is extremely expensive, not only in
the direct cost, but also because it makes criminals about as socially
and economically unproductive as possible. Add a bonus for anyone who
gets a sizeable promotion/raise, or skills training. Yes, this will be
in part a boondoggle. So are prison building projects ardently
supported by the prison guard's unions.

4) Small bonuses for the criminals themselves (or perhaps a
reduction in monitoring) for things like getting their GED or staying
clean for a year.

This is not perfect; the poor, and the criminals, we will probably
always have with us. But it would be a hell of a lot better than what
we have now.

Pretty good list, say I. But I wonder how much of our approach to crime is--dare I say--cultural...